I am a programmer who has only ever worked at tech companies. I have long searched for customer problems/product ideas to build a (software) startup around, but my own domain experience is just as a developer, and I want to help non-developers (I also believe it is harder to build dev tools startups, especially as cloud platforms grow).
Besides reading threads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14157880, I have tried the common advice of reaching out and interviewing people who do other things for a living. No great ideas simply fell out onto my lap of course. Every problem was either:
- a human/process problem or otherwise not blocked by software
- too minor, low-value, or niche
- solved by some existing products/features that they did not know about
- not important enough that they wanted to spend money on or otherwise invest in
- too hard/risky
For a while I successfully built and sold a low-value product for a particular market just to get a foot in the door, but interacting with my customers through that business also did not organically lead to discovering any higher-value products - the interviews were the same as above.
I am considering quitting and switching into a non-programming environment to learn about problems and form better hypotheses for myself. For example, joining a large non-tech enterprise's IT department, or studying to switch into corporate finance, or entering commerce logistics fields somehow. Is this crazy? I want to gain deeper exposure to other domains, and a common opinion is that it is best if you are solving problems that are your own, but this also feels like too much.
I am especially inspired by the stories behind Plangrid, Flexport, and many enterprise companies. They are brilliant - such "obvious" products, at least from my naive perspective. I know there exist many more unsolved problems that startups can be built around, but I don't know how to discover the right problems to focus on.
Besides reading threads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14157880, I have tried the common advice of reaching out and interviewing people who do other things for a living. No great ideas simply fell out onto my lap of course. Every problem was either:
- a human/process problem or otherwise not blocked by software - too minor, low-value, or niche - solved by some existing products/features that they did not know about - not important enough that they wanted to spend money on or otherwise invest in - too hard/risky
For a while I successfully built and sold a low-value product for a particular market just to get a foot in the door, but interacting with my customers through that business also did not organically lead to discovering any higher-value products - the interviews were the same as above.
I am considering quitting and switching into a non-programming environment to learn about problems and form better hypotheses for myself. For example, joining a large non-tech enterprise's IT department, or studying to switch into corporate finance, or entering commerce logistics fields somehow. Is this crazy? I want to gain deeper exposure to other domains, and a common opinion is that it is best if you are solving problems that are your own, but this also feels like too much.
I am especially inspired by the stories behind Plangrid, Flexport, and many enterprise companies. They are brilliant - such "obvious" products, at least from my naive perspective. I know there exist many more unsolved problems that startups can be built around, but I don't know how to discover the right problems to focus on.